Schools seek new ways to find gifted kids

Monday

Jan 22, 2007 at 12:08 AM

About 500,000 students across the state - roughly 8 percent of California's schoolchildren - have shown such talent and potential that they are receiving educational services developed for the academically, creatively or otherwise gifted.

Jennifer Torres

About 500,000 students across the state - roughly 8 percent of California's schoolchildren - have shown such talent and potential that they are receiving educational services developed for the academically, creatively or otherwise gifted.

In San Joaquin County, though, students recognized as gifted account for just 4 percent of public school students, state records show.

It's not that the county's children are any less above-average, county educators say. Rather, some systems for measuring talent do not yield as many gifted students as others. And around the county, several school districts are expanding their evaluation methods to qualify larger, more-diverse groups of children for gifted education.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, "gifted" students are those who "give evidence of high achievement capability in areas such as intellectual, creative, artistic or leadership capacity, or in specific academic fields, and who need services or activities not ordinarily provided by the school in order to fully develop those capabilities."

Typically in San Joaquin County, tests of intellectual ability measure whether children are gifted. In many districts, including Stockton Unified and Manteca Unified, teacher and parent recommendations also are considered.

Lodi Unified School District recently expanded the criteria it uses to assess potentially gifted children. Educators hope the change will increase the number of girls and ethnic or racial minorities in Gifted And Talented Education programs, said John Coakley, who coordinates the GATE program for the district.

"We want to provide services for students who excel, that have abilities that suggest they need additional challenges to keep them involved and engaged in learning," Coakley said.

Lodi Unified, like other districts in the county and throughout the state, has been criticized for racial imbalance in its GATE programs.

According to state figures, for example, white students make up about 30 percent of San Joaquin County's student population but 50 percent of GATE students.

Meanwhile, 42 percent of the county's students are Latino, and Latinos account for just 23 percent of GATE enrollment.

"We can identify more children, we can get more services for children, and we can acknowledge more children's ability," said Joanne Oien, superintendent of Thornton's tiny New Hope Elementary School District. "Test taking is not the only way to show you're a bright, think-outside-the-box person."

At New Hope Elementary School, with an enrollment of about 200 kindergartners through eighth-graders, 60 percent of students do not speak English fluently.

"They're not able to show their giftedness by test scores," she said. "If you are reading and writing at lower levels because you have not been in our country and not had the instruction, that doesn't mean you're not as smart as the next kid. That just means you haven't had enough time in our classrooms to show it."

Instead, New Hope's teachers discuss with each other which students might benefit from more-challenging coursework, Oien said.

Terri Mercer teaches a class of gifted sixth-graders at Stockton Unified's Rio Calaveras School. She praised her district's efforts to open GATE programs to larger groups of students, especially students whose achievement comes from diligent effort rather than natural ability.

"We have students that are really hard workers, that have literally earned their way into the program," Mercer said. "That's really a plus. The potential exists for them to succeed and excel."